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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I'm firmly in the camp of people who doesn't quite understand what a lot of "non-binary" people are doing with gender, despite being somewhat progressive and happy to exercise pronoun hospitality with such people. (I once heard an acquaintance describe their gender by saying, "if man is black, and woman is white, I'm purple - if you see me in monochrome, I'm more masculine, but really I'm not either of them" - and I was more confused than before I heard the analogy.)

I've seen various mottizens bring up the idea of "gender" being the latest subculture like goth or punk, and recently I stumbled across an interesting Tumblr post that accidentally circles around a similar insight. The whole thing is interesting, but I think you can get the gist from the following:

[...] I think there’s an interesting similarity in the way nonbinary (or genderqueer people in general) talk about the nuances of their gender and how people really big into specific music scenes talk about the nuances of the genres they listen to. Like there’s the description you give other people in your community, and the “normie” description you give to people who aren’t as familiar. And “genre” and “gender” are both constructs in similar ways too. Just my little binary observation tho.

and

so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they’re nonbinary or even just “female”, they clocked you as a gender normie lol.

Now, I grant that the gender-as-fashion analogy isn't the only possible takeaway from this person's observations. I'm reminded of the "soul-editor" from the SCP Foundation Wiki that had symbols from every major world religion, as well as a few unknown ones. Who's to say that some phenomenological aspects of being human aren't so complex that no one set of vocabulary is capable of describing it all? Perhaps some qualities of human minds/souls/whatever are ineffable, or so unique and subjective that one cannot help but create a new label for oneself in describing one's personality?

But I have my doubts. Mostly, I often feel like people must be mislabeling something that I have in my "mental box" as well. (I've read accounts of genderfluid people who talk about "waking up feeling masc" some days and dressing the part, while suddenly and abruptly "feeling femme" partway through the day and wanting to change outfits - and I couldn't help but speculate if they hadn't attached special significance to what I label "moods" in myself.) I don't discount that there are many real human experiences that aren't in my "mental box." In a very real way, I can't do much more than guess what depression, schizophrenia, OCD or dozens of other seemingly real human experiences are like. If I'm being maximally humble about what a tiny part of the vast terrain of possible human experiences I occupy, I have to concede that I can't know that many people aren't out there experiencing "gender" in ways I never will.

My partner is a binary trans man, and many of my friends and acquaintances are part of the LGBT+ community. I still don't quite understand why someone in that extended friend group suddenly finds it very important to change their name, and let everybody know that their pronouns are "she/they" now - while changing nothing else about their appearance or presentation. I'm happy to use a new name for someone, if they don't make such changes too frequently for me to keep up with, but I often feel baffled by why they find it so important? It's not really a big deal to me, but I would like an explanation. Gender-as-fashion seems so tempting as an explanation, but I worry that it might be a false explanation flattening human experiences into something that's more comfortable to me - the same way, "that person who supposedly has ADHD is just lazy" might flatten a person with ADHD into a form more comfortable for neurotypical people, and not in a way that is very sympathetic to the person with ADHD.

The whole idea of non-binary gender seems to me like it's a natural (and probably inevitable) result of the idea that gender is separate from sex. Occasional physical deformities aside, I imagine most people (though probably not all) would agree that we have only two sexes in mankind. So, if you take gender to be a euphemism for sex, then it naturally follows that there can only be two genders.

Decouple those concepts, though, and it's different. If gender is merely something to do with social norms and how you feel you fit into them, then it seems only natural that there can be more than two. There may be different combinations of social norms that one might group together in one package, and you as an individual may feel sometimes strongly drawn to one package, and sometimes to another.

Personally I think that the whole line of thought is nonsense. We have only two sexes, gender (as separate from sex) is not a thing, and so there's no "other" option for gender. But disagree though I do, I do at least think it's understandable how the non binary people are likely thinking about this topic.

I could understand the "I'm non-binary" but the whole "I'm non-binary trans femme" bit is where the confusion sets in. If you're non-binary, where does the trans bit come it? Is trans now meant to be sex not gender, despite all the protestations previously that sex and gender were two separate things? And anyway, how can you be both non-binary and one of the two binary femme/masc or female/male?

It does seem like attention seeking, more than anything else. If being cis het (white, male) is the worst identity in the world because Privilege, Systemic Racism, Oppressor, Colonizer, etc. then non-binary is an easy way to go "I'm not cis het! I'm one of the oppressed queer minority! Don't beat me up, please!" Most of the "I'm non-binary" that I've seen online identifying as such are pretty clearly female, the couple of male are also clearly identifiable as male. So yeah, I'm leaning towards 'fad" (if everyone in your social bubble is some flavour of queer, being the sole cis het is uncomfortable and makes you stand out as behind the times, some dull normie who might as well live in a suburb and vote Republican).

To answer your first question, the "trans" in "non-binary trans femme" is using "trans" as an umbrella term, with "non-binary" as a subset of that.

Personally I think that the whole line of thought is nonsense. We have only two sexes, gender (as separate from sex) is not a thing, and so there's no "other" option for gender. But disagree though I do, I do at least think it's understandable how the non binary people are likely thinking about this topic.

Agreed. As I've said before, I feel like the introduction of "gender" as something entirely different from "sex" is potentially insidious. It'd be like if I went around asking people to treat me as if I were 6'4". When people say "no, you're actually 5'10"", I reply "no, you're referring to my height. That's entirely different from my tallness. My height is 5'10", but my tallness is 6'4"".

I don't understand why you think the separation is nonsense. Social norms about the sexes do exist, and they are clearly separate from sex, since unlike sex, they differ from society to society and, within a given society, they change over time. So, we have given it a name. Moreover, there are always people who do not conform to current social norms (a male nurse in 1950? Crazy!)

i thinkI'd say a couple things to that. Gender roles may be real, but they can be somewhat arbitrary, and tend to be based on sex anyhow. But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

On the other hand, sex matters a lot. It matters biologically, medically, it has for most of history mattered legally as well. Rights have historically been granted or denied on the basis of sex. Similarly, from the concept of sex derives the concept of sexual orientation. Most people's orientation is towards the opposite sex, but there are some people whose sexual orientation is towards those of the same sex or towards both sexes. Genderists will thus say that a lesbian is someone who is attracted to people who "identify as female." Meanwhile, lesbians say no, they are attracted to people of the female sex only, and are not attracted to men no matter how men self-identify. And then they get accused of being transphobic by people who want to erase the concept of sex and replace it with this concept of gender.

But I think the very arbitraryness of gender roles in different places and times makes me utterly confused about why one's gender identity should matter to me at all, more than, going with the genre comparison, whether you like country music or rock or blues. it's something to know about you, I guess, but there's no need to give it any more attention than that.

I can't remember who, but someone raised an imo very effective argument against this elevation of gender identity by pointing out that some of the absurd claims made (i.e. you need some medical doctor or unassailable subjective insight to determine who a woman is) lead to a situation where you theoretically can't define women in such a way that it captures American, Saudi and Japanese women at the same time.

Except that nobody - even the most "woke" - acts like this is the case.

Pretty sure there were male "nurses" (caregivers to sick people) all throughout history. There are lots of tasks involved that need physical strength, carrying and lifting patients, restraining aggressive ones, etc.

That is why I referred specifically to 1950, and implicitly to the

USA, when the gender norms deemed nursing to be women's work, and why I said that gender norms often change over time.

1950s USA is this magical reference point for some reason, that justifies introducing a whole new concept called "gender". Actually that's not even surprising, I just wrote a comment on how we are stuck in the 60s on repeat, so yeah I guess comparing ourselves to one decade ago make sense.

So, had I said 1940, instead, when AKAIK the norms were the same, you would agree that gender norms can change? I am really not sure what your position on that is, and of course, that is my entire point. You are picking on the nit that is my admittedly somewhat snarky example, but are not addressing the underlying point.

Just because men and women play different roles, wear different clothes etc at different historical times and technological circumstances doesn't somehow negate that they are men and women. We don't need a new concept (gender) to be able to say that women had lives and jobs like this before but like that after.

Also if gender is merely the difference between the roles in different cultures or times, are transgender people adopting some roles from a different era than today? I thought they transition from male to female etc. and not from 21st century to, I don't know, 8th century.

Come on. I didn’t say that they aren't men and women. I said that norms have changed. My entire point has been that sex and gender mean different things, so how can you believe that I said that?

I don't get the relevance of the transgender question. What transgender people do or feel is not really relevant to what the term "gender" means, nor with whether gender norms are constant or instead change over time and space.

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Here's an old comment of mine from the old Reddit site:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/n8xict/comment/gxmeur8/

People say that gender is a social construct, but I think there is a more traditionally and standard-use word for what is being called "gender" these days ("expression as a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context"). Prior to 2010, I think that definition would not be called "gender" but rather "gender roles". I think it would be much less controversial if people said "gender roles are socially constructed" as opposed to "gender is socially constructed. After all, women in India, China, or wherever else do not act like women in the US, Canada, etc, so at least part of gender roles is socially constructed, if not all.

I sort of feel that this playing fast-and-loose with the terms "gender" and "gender-roles" has had implications for the development of the transgender movement. If people say that gender-roles are socially constructed, no biggie, no complaints from almost anyone. If people say that gender is socially-constructed, that would mean that being a man or woman itself is socially constructed; most people don't believe that to be true. After all, a woman in India may dress differently than a woman in the US, but everyone still agrees that they're both women. We don't believe that India-woman is a different gender from US-woman. I feel like the hot-swapping of these terms has been put to questionable and potentially insidious use.

I still have seen no convincing explanation of why people use the term gender these days to describe what used to be called gender roles.

We attach social roles to many attributes of people. For example, there are social roles for old people and young people that can differ between cultures. So do we need a new word for "age" that describes the social role attached to one's age?

I kinda feel like "adulting" looks suspiciously like the genesis of such terminology. And if I'm being pedantic, my high school health textbook in 2002 divided age into things like chronological age and social age, but those feel more like "biological sex" and "gender roles" rather than "sex" Vs "gender", so IDK.

What's wrong with "social expectations" and "social roles"?

Sure, but usually context makes it clear. For example we don't need a fancy academic term that distinguishes the social role of a police officer from the occupation of police a police officer, so I don't see why we need a separate term for the social role of men and women.

If we had an ages-long debate about the social role of police officers, it would be rather useful to have a specific word for that.

I dunno, there are languages that have no equivalent of the word "gender" and seem to be having that conversation just fine.

But on the other hand, it is rather silly to argue against having specific and precise terms.

See, there's the rub. Academia loves jargon because they think it makes their field more serious, but jargon doesn't necessarily mean a word i specific or precise. When you point that out they love to blame Twitter or Tumbler activists, but that's incorrect, a lot of vagueness of different terms comes from academia itself. Just check the usage of the word "neoliberal" if you don't believe me.

If a word is creating more confusion than clarity, I think it's perfectly fine to suggest dropping it's usage.

That would not distinguish social norms around sex from those around everything else.

So? We don't come up with a fancy term for every other type of social norm or role.

I am not sure how fancy "gender" is in comparison to the obvious alternative, "gender norms." I really don't understand what the objection is. People who study this stuff use a particular term. So what? Why does that matter?

This is like left wingers who get all bent out of shape about corporate personhood, and as a result write [pointless, irrelevant articles]{https://theprogressivecynic.com/2013/06/23/if-corporations-are-people-they-are-sociopaths/) because they don't understand that the term "person" has a specific legal meaning which .

I am not sure how fancy "gender" is in comparison to the obvious alternative, "gender norms." I really don't understand what the objection is. People who study this stuff use a particular term. So what? Why does that matter?

It matters a great deal because they are coopting a preexitsing term with preexisting definitions and using it to achieve their preferred outcome. The words are charged with previous connotations, that are inseparable in most people's minds, and as such can have sway on the public. This is, like, the core argument of Scott's brilliant essay Social Justice and Words Words Words which largely popularized the term "Motte and Bailey" from which this forum itself derives its name.

The paper was critiquing post-modernism, an area I don’t know enough about to determine whether or not their critique was fair. It complained that post-modernists sometimes say things like “reality is socially constructed”. There’s an uncontroversial meaning here – we don’t experience the world directly, but through the categories and prejudices implicit to our society. For example, I might view a certain shade of bluish-green as blue, and someone raised in a different culture might view it as green. Okay. Then post-modernists go on to say that if someone in a different culture thinks that the sun is light glinting off the horns of the Sky Ox, that’s just as real as our own culture’s theory that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas a great big nuclear furnace. If you challenge them, they’ll say that you’re denying reality is socially constructed, which means you’re clearly very naive and think you have perfect objectivity and the senses perceive reality directly.

The writers of the paper compare this to a form of medieval castle, where there would be a field of desirable and economically productive land called a bailey, and a big ugly tower in the middle called the motte. If you were a medieval lord, you would do most of your economic activity in the bailey and get rich. If an enemy approached, you would retreat to the motte and rain down arrows on the enemy until they gave up and went away. Then you would go back to the bailey, which is the place you wanted to be all along.

By this metaphor, statements like “God is an extremely powerful supernatural being who punishes my enemies” or “The Sky Ox theory and the nuclear furnace theory are equally legitimate” or “Men should not be allowed to participate in discussions about gender” are the bailey – not defensible at all, but if you can manage to hold them you’ve got it made.

Statements like “God is just the order and love in the universe” and “No one perceives reality perfectly directly” and “Men should not interject into safe spaces for women” are the motte – extremely defensible, but useless.

As long as nobody’s challenging you, you spend time in the bailey reaping the rewards of occupying such useful territory. As soon as someone challenges you, you retreat to the impregnable motte and glare at them until they get annoyed and go away. Then you go back to the bailey.

Huh? It was RococoBasilica and you claiming we need the term to talk about social roles, how is saying "not really" getting bent out of shape? If anything, isn't it people who try to get others fired for "misgendering" who are getting bent out of shape?

I was responding to a very specific question, which was why not use the generic term "social norms." My answer was that there are many types of social norms, and the term refers to a specific one. Not sure what that has to do with misgendering. I can believe that 1) gender norms exist; 2) therefore, we need a term to distinguish them from other classes of norms; 3) the term "gender" is reasonable term to use to refer to those norms, even if it is not the one I would have chosen; and 4) left discourse around misgendering is submoronic

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Not OP but I would call them "gender roles".

Call them "sex roles" if you prefer, it's all the same to me.

Gender doesn't refer to nothing. It a synonym for sex. We could say sex roles, but that sounds too much like it's referring to something related to the act of sex.

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